Mr Hammerlund

I have been thinking about this a lot recently.  Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash There are times when teachers put in place steps for students to meet when building or creating. Sometimes it can feel that we are teaching students how to take steps and reflect along the way. But other times those are obstacles that can demotivate and actually crush the creativity we are trying to develop. 

I am reading about executive function in the brain and how essential it is to everything we do.  The executive functions are a set of processes that all have to do with managing one's resources in order to achieve a goal.  (Cooper-Kahn, Dietzel, 2008, p. 10 as cited in Sulla, 2018 )  I might add something like skills to "resources" since Sulla talks about how we need to be able to analyze, evaluate, and reflect when doing the somewhat simple task of fixing drywall. But I was more interested in the teaching activities this book would offer.  The first activity suggested to help build executive function was something called "Now You See It, Now You Don't". Tableau I, 1921,  Kunstmuseum Den Haag This is similar to the game memory. But you try to remember specific details of the picture when describing it. For example, you would show students a picture for a short amount of time, then hide the picture from them. The students would try to describe the images in a...